Help:Philly Book of Style
The Philly Book of Style is a guide to style and layout on PhiladelphiaWiki. This page covers the presentation of information; technical information on syntax is in the section about . If you want the pages you edit to fit in well with PhiladelphiaWiki - and you should! - you should try to ensure that they use the styling and layout presented here. If you do not know exactly how to do something, don't worry - do what you can, and then ask for help with formatting in your edit summary. Remember that if there is another page that uses a certain technique, you can edit it to see how it's done. As with all style guides, it is sometimes appropriate to break the rules - just don't do so needlessly! These first few paragraphs are called the lead section, and they are the most important parts of an article. They are indexed heavily by search engines and are usually the first thing a visitor reads. You should ensure that the lead section contains a synopsis of the page's content, and a few of the most relevant links to other wiki pages. The full name of the subject should be prominently present in bold text. Other names, aliases and abbreviations that commonly represent the same concept should be included, also in bold, and you should add those pages as redirects to the main page (edit their entries to be #REDIRECT Main Page Name). __TOC__ Headers Headers are used to denote boundaries between sections. They are present on almost all pages, as even short articles have external links with more information. Header titles on PhiladelphiaWiki are normally not capitalized after the first letter, unless there is a proper name involved. There should be a single blank line before and after the header, as this provides for easier reading when editing without inserting extra space into the output. Header types There are several different levels of heading, each denoted by increasing level of = marks. The first level is typically not used unless three levels of "ruled" section dividers are appropriate, as it's rather big and restarts the section numbering - the second, third and fourth levels are most popular, while the fifth is used rarely, and the sixth almost never. Fourth level Fifth level = Sixth level = Note that text written here still stays the same size as other text in the article, making sixth level headers harder to notice. If you find yourself going 6 levels deep in an article, you may want to consider a different organization scheme or even breaking the article up into separate articles. Table of Contents A Table of Contents is automatically added before the first section heading on pages with more than four headers. If desired, it can be hidden by adding anywhere on the page (it does not have to be on a separate line). If it is getting in the way or would look better elsewhere, it's possible to force it to display in a particular place by typing __TOC__ where you want it to appear. This will also force it to appear on pages with fewer than four headers (as will __FORCETOC__, for the default position). A common trick is to "float" the table to one side, with __TOC__ Unnoted headers If you do not want a section to show up on the Table of Contents - like this one - you should use HTML for the header (e.g. Level 2 heading). Only headers created with wiki markup are included in the Table of Contents Edit links Edit links are available to the right of each header. To disable these, add __NOEDITSECTION__ anywhere in the article. Links In general only the first mention of a topic on a page should be linked, unless the page is long and the link is likely to be missed. Try to use the full name of an article rather than an acronym, unless space is restricted (such as on a picture). Article names Article names should either match the proper name or common usage of a subject (including capitalization), where possible. If there is no obvious correct name, use the name you would be most likely to link to from another article. Do not use capital letters for subjects that are not normally capitalized. If it is not possible to use the correct title - for example, an IRC channel, which starts with a # - name the article something like Philadelphia (IRC) and put this template at the top: . Link to the article with piped links (#philadelphia). Articles about people Note that articles about people should be written in the third-person. If you are writing about yourself, avoid the use of "I" (and be careful to keep a sense of objectivity :-). Redirects If there are many possible names for an article, you should pick the best one and then add redirects from all the other pages to that page. Do this by editing the other pages and placing #REDIRECT Main page title. As above, be careful about redirecting, or linking to or from from a character that is not publicly associated with a person. The, A, etc If the subject of an article properly starts with "The" or a similar preposition (e.g. The Prancing Skiltaire), you should generally use this and redirect from the name without the The. Correct category sorting Do not do something like moving an article to Prancing Skiltaire, The to ensure correct categories - instead, do this: Mann Music Center, The. This is a common issue for articles about works of fiction. Pictures Pictures should normally be floated to one side - large pictures should be sized appropriately by specifying a size on the Image: tag. It is rarely appropriate to have an image wider than 300px, unless the intention is to cover the width of the whole page. It may be appropriate to place a picture without a frame, especially if it has a white background. Most buttons and banners are displayed in this way. Stubs Very short pages (generally two paragraphs or less, excluding links) that could be expanded are termed stubs. These pages should include the template (or a more specific variant, like ). Note: If there really is very little to be said about something, it's not a stub, but it may be more appropriate to merge it with another page. Categories Categories help organization and offer visitors a way to browse through related articles without direct links to them. Articles are added to categories with optional text to sort by. While category tags may be placed anywhere within an article, the standard place for them is at the end, either all in one line or on separate lines. Like article names, category names should only be capitalized for words that are normally capitalized - thus, Category:Regional Rail would be correct, but Category:Public Transportation would not. Please bear this in mind when creating new categories, as it gets harder to fix with each article added to the category. Regarding sub categories, the most specific category wins. For example, if you are categorizing a movie, it belongs in Category:Movies and not Category:Culture, which is the parent of Category:Movies. Otherwise, parent categories would find themselves filled with duplicates of what was listed in the sub categories. If you are absolutely unsure of what category something belongs in, place it in Category:Unsorted, and someone else will take care of it. Subcategory creation Generally speaking, if there are a decent number of items in a category that have something in common, they could be moved into a sub category to help make the categories better sorted. To do this, change the category links to the new name on the pages to be moved, then click on one of the resulting red links and create that page, adding the old category link at the bottom. General advice * Write actively and concisely * Write an article you would want to read * Write in a way that encourages interest in the topic * Write with a view to future expansion ** Insert appropriate links, even if they don't exist yet ** If a section should be there, add it, even if you don't write more than a line about it * Write what you know - and if you don't know, find out * Use headings, pictures and Did you know? sections to break up long passages of text = Links to other documents = PhiladelphiaWiki is a big place - but there's far more out there than we can or should put on PhiladelphiaWiki. There are hundreds of great resources for Philadelphia information, as well as the actual items of interest. Links to these external resources are typically placed in a section at the bottom of an article, unless part of a website as described above. It is sometimes appropriate to insert external links into the main text of an article. This is typically done with links to further information that is directly related to the text, such as a forum conversation, and where a References section is inappropriate. References The references section is rarely used, but can be found on some of the more historical articles, or summaries whch require research. It is similar to the External links section that follows at the end, although it may also contain non-web references. Titles should be presented in italics, and a date should be noted, if known (and appropriate). References are usually presented as a numbered list (#). If you wish to refer to items in the body of the text, you should use the newer method of referencingCite extension for MediaWiki - user guide which lends itself to a reasonably natural style and reduces the need for templates. Read the reference below for more information. Another way you can do it is to use the at the point of reference , and before the entry in the references section, instead of the # mark. You may see this on some of the older articles. Touring Philadelphia; Benjamin Franklin, T.G. Morton et. al. (October 2001) See also The See also section is used to link to other wiki pages, either on PhiladelphiaWiki or on other places, that are related but which were not included as links in the main text of the article. You can link to Wikipedia by adding Manual of Style at Wikipedia * Wikipedia's items on headings, links and footnotes External links The external links section contains off-site links to related web material. They are presented in an unordered list. Try to separate links for site names like this: * SEPTA - Official website It may be appropriate for the title of the link to be in italics for journals and the like. Category:PhiladelphiaWiki help